1/13/2024 0 Comments Tim keller forgivenessYou get out your performance record, you develop a righteousness and offer it and if you’re good enough, you’re worthy and you’re accepted. That if you’re going to, if there’s a God and if you’re going to have a spiritual connection, it’s the same, it’s not a vocation record or academic record, it’s a moral record but this is how you get connected to God, this is how you go to heaven, this is how you find enlightenment or whatever. Everybody has these performance record, these validating performance record by which I get jobs, by which I get in school, by which I, you know, do all these various things, it’s, that’s the reason why every religion and every culture, everywhere in the world believes it’s the same with God. And because that’s the way this is in all of life, see. Please accept me.” And if you’re good enough, you’re accepted. Or let’s say you want a get an advanced degree, you know and you want to get into a degree program, what do you do? Well in that case, you bring out not your vocational record, you bring out your academic record, you bring out your grades! And these now function as your validating performance record and you say “look at this, because of these grades I am worthy of this position, accept me. And if your performance record is good enough, if you’re good enough, the door opens. And if you want a job you take it to the employer or whoever you have to apply to and it’s your validating performance record and you say, this means I’m worthy of the position, accept me. It should have all your accomplishments and your experiences. For example you want a job, you get out a resume. It is a validating performance record which opens doors. Righteousness is a validating performance record, which open doors, which opens doors. It’s almost a negative word in our language so let me explain how it functions, what we are really talking about here. This word “righteousness” I know does not compute much, it doesn’t connect to us English speakers. This righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” Let me show you how absolutely radical that is. The top of this passage, the very famous beginning of the passage, “but now a righteousness of God apart from the law has been made known. Why do we need it, what is it and how do we receive it. So what we are going to look at tonight is the first of these three ideas, “free justification.” What is that? Why do we need it, what is it and how do we receive it. Though on the day you lost an hour of sleep, it’s a lot easier to not be excited but you never know because of the theme. I’m going to aim for clarity and practicality more than being inspirational, I can’t promise not occasionally get excited. And I want to, I’m going to be practical and clear, more than inspirational. But what I want to do for three weeks is I want to be as clear and as practical as about what these things are and how you have to relate to these three things. And for three weeks we are actually going to look at essentially these same verses, chapter 3, in the beginning of chapter 4, for three weeks to look at each of those phrases and during these, and the reason why is because actually as you know if you’ve ever been here before, we actually talk about these three things every week. And we are looking at Romans 1, 2, 3 and 4 because here we have Paul summarizing the story of the bible and here in chapter 3, the last half of chapter 3, and the beginning of chapter 4, we probably have the Paul’s most, best most essential summary of what he thinks the bible’s all about and what this salvation is that God has done to put the world right and there are three phrases that are, that actually are in a sense repeated and they’re brought in the relationships with each other in different ways throughout these few verses but those three phrases are, “we are justified freely by faith through the blood of Christ.” Free justification all by faith because of through the blood of Jesus. We are understanding that the bible is not so much a set of disconnected stories each with a little lesson on how to live your life but the bible actually comprises a single story that tells us what’s wrong with the human race with the world, what God has done to put it right in Jesus Christ and then as a result how history is going to turn out in the end. Now every single week we are looking at the story ark of the whole bible.
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